Olympic Affair

by Terry Frei

  Foy Draper, who was changing after winning the 200 meters and showering, heard that. “Man, do you guys ever quit?” Draper challenged. “It doesn’t do anyone good to have Morris limp down the runway and jump twelve feet. Come on, they came to see him . . . and they did.”

  The next morning, his ankle was sore as he joined Glenn Cunningham and Ken Carpenter for breakfast. He vacillated about whether to compete, especially since he had missed the first day in Stockholm, but Cunningham assured him that he—as acting coach—would say he insisted that Glenn sit out the day’s activities. After all, his scheduled appearance in the 400 would come against Olympic-caliber Scandinavian runners, and limping through it wouldn’t do anyone—including the fans—any good. Cunningham asked only that Glenn suit up in his uniform, smile through an introduction to the crowd and sign autographs and socialize with the fans. The goal would be for him to be at full-strength for the upcoming stops. From Stockholm, Cunningham and three others were heading for a meet at Paris, and four other Americans were joining Glenn for the meet at Karlstad in the western part of Sweden. Then it would be on to Finland and Norway.

  “Deal,” Glenn said.

  “Can I get the same deal?” Ken Carpenter asked mischievously.

  A bellman called: “Mister Morris! Mister Glenn Morris!”

  Glenn raised his hand. “Here!”

  “Mister Morris, we have a radio call for you,” the bellman said.

  Glenn looked at the other two Americans, shrugging.

  A minute later, Glenn wasn’t surprised to hear Leni’s voice. “Hello, Glenn,” she said.

  “Hello, Leni.”

  “I’ve missed you.”

  “Leni . . .”

  “I got your letter—a day late,” she said. “Most of it was nice. I don’t agree with all of it, however.”

  “I know.”

  “I wish you had come and found me and told me all that,” she said.

  “It would have made it harder. I thought you’d see it before I left, anyway.”

  He waited.

  “I need you to come back to Berlin,” she said.

  “We went through that.”

  “No, I need you to come back for more filming. Our plane will be there tomorrow to pick you up and bring you back here.”

  She explained that the previous evening, while again going through the footage of the final event, the 1,500 meters, at the Geyer Film Lab, she confirmed how inadequate it was because of the lack of lighting and intimacy. “I want the type of extra film we got after the pole vault. It will help me, and it will help you, if we can get that kind of footage of you. Erwin Huber has agreed to be a part of this, too, and he said we should be able to find the Czech boy who competed with you.”

  “Leni, what are you talking about? I’ve got all these meets coming up . . . then home. I can’t just quit, pull out of the meets, and come there.”

  He didn’t mention his ankle injury.

  “You can,” Leni insisted. “Your American Olympic people already have approved this. They know the more you’re in the film, the better it is for them. It’s better than a few Swedes and Finns and Norwegians seeing you in the discus or something on that silly tour.”

  Glenn could see the Badger nearby, waiting. He was reading another telegram.

  “Leni, hold on a second,” he said. “I’ll be right back . . . I promise.”

  Noticing Glenn’s approach, the Badger held up the telegram. “Looks like you’re heading back to Berlin tomorrow! Your air passage is all set, says right here. Be at the airport at . . .”

  “What about the rest of the tour?” Glenn asked sharply.

  “You’re injured!” the Badger said, grinning. “Now, be at the airport at . . .”

  Glenn already was on his way back to the phone. There, he said to Leni, “You didn’t even ask me? You at least could have done that first.”

  “I needed to move fast . . . and make sure it was possible.”

  He had made the break and faced the realities of Life after the Olympics, Life away from dreamland. This would make it so complicated again. Hell, there probably were complications he hadn’t even thought about! For an instant, he told himself he would be able to resist temptation with Leni, but then he knew that was both unrealistic and impossible—if she still wanted him. And she was Leni.

  “Glenn?”

  “I’m here.”

  “If it has to be business, it will be just business. One of your Americans already lectured Ernst Jäger about what we had to do to make sure you remain an amateur for the next Olympics. Just expenses, nothing more, we are told. And then you go home on the ship.”

  “From where? I was down to leave from Southampton.”

  “That still can work,” she said. “The plane can fly you there. Or I suppose you could go over to Hamburg and catch it there . . . if we’re done.”

  She didn’t tell Glenn that to get him out of rest of the tour, she had agreed to pay the American Olympic Committee an astounding five thousand dollars, plus compensate with smaller checks the organizers of the meets in Karlstad, Helsingfors, and Oslo.

  On the rocky plane ride, Glenn again tried to think it through. By returning, he knew he was jumping right back into involvement with Leni. He wasn’t fooling himself into thinking he could reject her and turn this into all business. Unless she was determined to be coldly professional, the relationship was resuming for at least a few more days. If she could live with that, he could. But then he would be gone.

  Leni and Ernst Jäger met him at the airport Saturday, and her initial hug was between circumspect and affectionate. But when her publicity man went with the driver to stow his bags—one suitcase and one athletic bag—in the limousine, she abandoned all reserve and the kiss answered the question of whether she expected this visit to be coldly professional. As they pulled up to the Hotel Adlon, Glenn laughed. He explained to Leni that he knew this must be a great hotel because it’s where all the American Olympic officials had stayed. “They only go first class,” he said.

  “You settle in,” she said. “Kurt will pick you up and bring you to the restaurant. We’ll go over the schedule then.”

  A bellman rushed to take Glenn’s bags. Jäger got out of the car and gave him a key. The driver also stepped out and stretched his arms. Leni leaned over. “I’m glad you came,” she said. Before Glenn could react, she added, “Now go. We have plenty of time . . . to talk.”

  At the small, but elegant restaurant several miles from Central Berlin, Glenn was relieved when Leni told him she wouldn’t press about the future. “I am not promising I’ll never bring it up,” she said. “I will. Sometime. But I’m happy we’re not leaving it as it was after our last meeting. If we have to say good-bye, we will say good-bye. But at least it would be face-to-face this time.”

  “Leni, no matter what happens here, I don’t think anything can change . . .”

  “Stop! Let’s not ruin now.”

  “Let me ask you,” Glenn said slowly. “Do you really need to do more filming? You’d seen the film of the 1,500 before hadn’t you?”

  “Yes, I had,” she said. “The more I looked at it and thought about it, the more convinced I was that it wasn’t good enough. I could have gotten by without replacing it, but this will be much better.” She smiled at him. “Don’t get a big head, but if it hadn’t been you, I wouldn’t have thought this necessary. I admit that. You are going to be a star, Glenn. You are a handsome American, and if the filmmaker of this was a fat man named Heinrich, rather than me, he would say the same thing, because it will help the film.”

  Leni said they would have at least two sessions with the cameramen—one the next afternoon, Sunday, with just Glenn as the subject in the daylight at the stadium; and then one at night, with Huber and the other athletes, re-creating the climactic 1,500-meter heat. “We are hoping for Tuesday night, but that’s not certain,” she said. “We need to make sure we’re set on our crew and track officials, too. We’ll set up the same lights we
had for the pole vault and it will be wonderful footage.”

  “What are we doing in the daylight tomorrow?” Glenn asked.

  “Close-ups of you looking very masculine as you get ready to do various events or maybe relaxing on the infield grass,” Leni said with a smile. “That shouldn’t be difficult for you.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “And after that, re-create you receiving your medal, the wreath, and the oak,” she said. “We have people set up to do those honors.”

  “So I’d change into my blazer and tie and all that—like the real ceremony?”

  “I think it would be better in your competition uniform. That’s the way it was for most of the presentations. But if we decide to, we can do both. We now have enough time to try several things.”

  Glenn chuckled. Leni slapped his hand. “I mean in the filming, young man,” she said.

  After spending the night with Leni at her apartment, Glenn didn’t make it back to the Adlon until late Sunday morning, and that was to pick up his bag with his uniform, sweat suit, and shoes on the way to the stadium. There, when Glenn emerged from the dressing-room tunnel in his white USA uniform, with his Number 801 still pinned to the front and back, he was impressed to notice that Leni’s attention to detail was so complete, she had arranged for stadium workers to relight the Olympic-flame cauldron. Yet after the excitement of the competition and the huge crowds in the stadium only two weeks earlier, it seemed eerily quiet. Leni, wearing billowing gray slacks and a blouse with a sweater over it, teased him, “Here we have the hitherto unknown American and the favorite in this event, Glenn Morris from Colorado.” Glenn couldn’t resist smiling, in part because it was the first time he’d ever heard anyone say “hitherto.”

  She directed him to the shot put ring, where two movie cameramen, Albert Kling and Werner Hundhausen, and still photographer Rolf Lantin waited. He went through the motions of several throws, and then took a break with his hands on his knees as Leni stood over the heavy steel ball on the ground. “Appears easy to me,” she said brightly and, with great effort and mock grunting, picked it up, cradled it in both hands and handed it to Glenn.

  While he continued throwing, Glenn thought back to her crew shooting at the pre-Olympics practice at the Village track, and it seemed to him that this was a bit of a repeat. As if she was reading his mind, Leni said, “Glenn, just keep in mind that no matter what, we can’t have too much film of anything.”

  For the next two hours, they shot footage and pictures of Glenn in various spots around the track. About halfway through, a blonde woman wearing the outfit of the medal-ceremony wreath presenters emerged from the dignitaries’ area of the stands at mid-track, but what struck Glenn more than the appearance of the woman herself was that two SS men and one plainclothesman were with her. There was something familiar about her, but he couldn’t place her. Finally, they moved to the medal-stand area and the woman and her entourage joined them. Leni explained to Glenn that she realized they couldn’t re-create the entire ceremony without the other two medalists and the Olympic officials presenting the medals, so all she had in mind was Glenn being draped with the oak-leaf wreath and then pretending to be looking at the American flag as the anthem played.

  Leni led Glenn by the hand to the woman. She was more handsome than beautiful, but a nice-looking woman with noticeable makeup applied, perhaps in her late twenties. In German, Leni introduced him, and then said, “And Glenn . . . this is Eva.”

  Eva smiled, shyly. “Hello, Glenn Morris,” she said. That seemed to be the extent of her English.

  Leni said, “Now that you two have met, let’s get on to the ceremony. Glenn, top step, lean down, and Eva places the wreath on your head. You smile and say thank you, then turn to look at the flagpoles.”

  She repeated what seemed to be similar instructions to Eva in German. Eva giggled and asked something in the same language. Smiling, Leni clearly told her no. They went through the presentation three times for the still photographer and a couple of times for the two film cameramen. Glenn noticed that every time, the shooting came from behind Eva, and he realized they weren’t getting anything of her face.

  Leni announced in both German and English that the next take would be it. This time, as Eva placed the wreath on his head, she delivered a quick kiss to his forehead. Glenn and others laughed. Leni didn’t.

  With Eva and her escort watching, Leni then coached Glenn through the pretend anthem playing as he looked at the flagpoles at the end of the stadium. “You have just won the gold medal, you have accepted it and the wreath, and now you hear your anthem!” she said.

  Even without the music, without the flag, and without the crowd, Glenn had no problem remembering and re-creating the moment. He was wearing his uniform, not the blazer and necktie this time, and despite that and the other differences, he was amazed at the feeling.

  When Leni pronounced the filming ended, Eva took an Olympic program from one of the SS men and extended it to Glenn. She spoke German, but he got the message: She wanted an autograph. Glenn signed his name, then thought to add, “To Eva,” above the signature. She thanked him and left with her escorts, heading toward what Glenn assumed was a tunnel exit from the dignitaries’ section.

  As they walked toward the dressing-room tunnel, Glenn asked Leni, “So who’s Eva? She seems familiar.”

  Leni didn’t answer. Then the light went off in Glenn’s head.

  “That night! At the Geyer Lab! She was the woman who came in late. Behind . . .”

  “That’s right,” Leni said.

  “But what . . .”

  “That’s all I’m going to say!”

  In the dark later, in bed, he tried to raise it again.

  “Let me guess about Eva,” he began.

  He felt Leni tense up. “I don’t know the whole story, either,” she said. “So stop it! I mean it.”

  She came up with something—again—to take his mind off Eva.

  32

  Leni and Glenn

  Monday, August 24–Thursday, August 27

  Leni sheepishly admitted to Glenn that lining up enough German track and field officials and making all the arrangements for the night filming was taking longer than she expected—and hoped. But Erwin Huber indeed had found Josef Klein, who ran with them in so many of the decathlon heats, including in the 1,500 meters, and Klein would arrive in Berlin that afternoon. They weren’t having luck locating the other two runners from the heat, Maurice Boulanger of Belgium and Lyuben Doychev of Bulgaria, and Leni said, if necessary, they would recruit other athletes to fill the field. She told Glenn that Huber and Klein were meeting them for dinner that night at another of Germany’s finest restaurants, Ludtke’s, and they all would talk about what they would be trying to do in the filming.

  Glenn knew he should have been flattered if Leni was deliberately drawing out the shooting, but he again reminded her he had to be on the SS Manhattan before it left Europe, catching it at Hamburg, Havre, or Southampton.

  “We’ll have you on that boat somewhere,” Leni promised.

  Glenn realized he was enjoying his stay, had come around to completely rationalizing it, and for more than the energetic lovemaking. He was looking forward to returning to the States and Colorado, reveling in the glory of his gold-medal victory, and seeing what opportunities might be out there. Yes, he still assumed Karen would be part of it . . . eventually. But this was an exhilarating interim, and Leni seemed to have accepted that.

  In the afternoon, they watched her first film, the silent The Holy Mountain. Her face filled the screen in the opening, and then she, as Diotima, danced on the jagged rocks by the sea.

  “When was this?” Glenn asked.

  “Ten years ago,” she said. She laughed. “I was very young.”

  “You’re prettier now,” he said. Indeed, she seemed a girl on the screen; now she was a woman. He was tempted to ask if she’d had work done on her teeth, but he knew that would be ungentlemanly. She didn’t bother to trans
late the title cards, except when she was shown on cross-country skis, bidding farewell to her beau, about to race. “It says, ‘Come back a winner, and I’ll grant you a wish,’” she said.

  “That sounds familiar,” Glenn said dryly.

  He was impressed that she looked to be an excellent skier. “No faking it there, is there?” he asked.

  “That’s all me!” she said.

  Suddenly, he recalled the Time cover, with her on skis and wearing a bathing suit. No, no faking it.

  At the end of the film, when the awaiting Diotima got word of her beau’s death on the mountain after his selfless act of sacrifice in remaining with a fallen climber, tears dripped down her cheek. Diotima walked out the door of the mountain cabin, and the tale—with brief flashes of shots of the mountains and sea—ended.

  “That was my first break,” Leni said. “It got me around Doctor Fanck. I was just learning how to act, but to see the film being made, all the challenges, all the opportunities, that was what attracted me.”

  They took a walk, holding hands, through the Tiergarten, then headed to dinner at Ludtke’s, where Huber and Klein were waiting. They had a corner table, but Glenn at first still wondered if they were being reckless, especially when Leni let it slip that American journalists dined here. None seemed to be present, and then Glenn also realized even the American Olympic Committee folks knew and approved of what he was doing, so on most levels, there was nothing to hide. Officially, he was here, with a German and a Czech, and perhaps more, to do supplemental filming.

  Glenn was reminded what a gentleman Huber was. The German had rallied on the second day to finish fourth and didn’t seem at all envious of Glenn’s gold. Glenn decided one reason was that after Hans Sievert’s injury, not even his own countrymen expected much out of Huber, who at twenty-nine was considered to have seen his best days in the event. Klein still was a short, stocky teenager who spoke only Czech, but his smile was infectious.

  Over dinner, Leni explained in both German and English, and pantomiming to Klein, that she wanted to re-create the actual race under her bright lights in the dark, but wouldn’t make them run the entire distance. “We’ll get the start, the jostling during the race for position, and Glenn coming down the stretch and finishing as the Olympic champion,” she said. “And then we have you two congratulating him and we see the beauty of sportsmanship all around.”